"In my days everything was ASCII symbols because of the limitations of technology, but we LIKED it that way!

GET OFF MA LAAAAWWWWN!"

The above is a summary of the article for those that would rather not read it.

OH WAIT, I mean it's a horrible, morally-perilous "CHEAT" for the article.

PS Don't get me wrong--I think that Rogue was a triumph whose clones and evolutions I still personally enjoy (though with a graphical tileset which I suppose has "coddled" me into a stupor), and that permadeath does introduce a new layer to gameplay.

But frankly Alex Sassoon Coby should be put in the mail room if this is the sort of crap he's going to push on gamers who play games for fun rather than for a living.

@vernholio The thing is that I'm pretty sure it really wasn't written tongue in cheek. The guy is 100% serious.

@Sigil-otaku Completing the game 5 and a half hours in Normal with four experienced Diablo franchise players? That's neither "completing the game," surprising, nor the typical player's experience; people that actually played Diablo in the past would realize all this. And when a game is newly launched, sometimes bugs happen, even awful bugs, and this isn't even the worst that's occurred in major releases.

ggred's comment is more apropos, that there's no reason for this to be making a headline article, except that it's Blizzard.

But your comment is pretty much empty hyperbole.

GUILD WARS Is the ONLY ESSENTIALLY online multiplayer cooperative game that's justified being online only. Neither Diablo, Diablo II, or Diablo III is essentially multiplayer. And no: even though Starcraft II is at its core an RTS, the analogy with Diablo III an its multiplayer component is completely faulty. Diablo III is most assuredly for also for people who don't necessarily like multiplayer aRPGs, since the single player experience is fully-rounded very enjoyable. The designers know this well and made sure that it could be enjoyed as a single player game in addition to a multiplayer game. The excuses he gave for making it onlnie-only were just that: excuses. And frankly, I found them to be a little infuriating and frustrating. I bet he's almost convinced himself of their truth, too. However, when he says he'll play both Diablo III and Torchlight II, that much I agree with. I'll be playing both as well. He's right that the genre has been too underpopulated for some time now. As for "innovation," I felt that Diablo III had some positive innovation in a good number of aspects.I definitely don't agree with other players that say DIII is completely uninnovative and nothing more than a HD graphics-skinned DII clone.

Thanks for making this article and for being so frank about your impression and reaction as a trans-woman. It almost makes me wonder--what exactly was Capcom's motivation for making Poison transgender in the first place? (Also, yeah I know you don't feel you're "gender-bent": you're 100% a woman inside. I get it. Nonetheless... I think you know what I'm sayin' ;p) It seems to me that Japan is far more comfortable with gender-bending than the US is. I could site a lot of examples throughout Japanese mainstream pop cultures to illustrate this, whereas in the US gender bending is still something relegated to mostly gay audiences.

This guy's making too much out of the Assassin's Creed's III big preorder binge. Or, rather, publishers were already well-aware of the message that the rush of preorders sends: a large number of players are going to snatch up the latest sequel in a popular franchise, regardless of how little or how much information is already released about the game. So the players that have thus far pre-ordered the game are the die-hard fans, the ones who were already set to buy the game. And beyond that, it's also a given that previews are going to talk about the game in mostly positive terms. They almost all do, even when the reviews express disappointment over the final product. So it's unlikely that previews would change this segment of the player base's minds. Everyone knows this. It's not news to anyone at all (except, perhaps, the author of this article...?). Also, I think that a single week's sales is not incredibly significant in terms of a game's ultimate perceived success or failure. A single burst of sales volume, in but a single week, may not mean much in the long-run.

As a gay gamer myself, in some ways I wish less of a deal was made about this. The socially progressive are touting this as a sign that we're becoming a society of tolerance, and the socially conservative are holding this up as a sign of impending social collapse. And as feeling caught in between the two sides, I feel... rather uncomfortable. As for either gendered relationships being a plot device in a game, I dunno... I look at this in two ways. First of all, is there really time for a deep romantic involvement during a war like this? Granted, I could understand a fling being tossed into the story line, such as there was between Sha'ira and Shepherd. But an engrossing, developing romance doesn't make a ton of sense. Secondly, IF there's going to be romantic options, then I guess it's nice that there are increased romantic options for the main character: more options are always better if all options lead to interesting results. Also, I wouldn't hold any video game character up as a paragon of morality. Finally, for the "Christians" that are making such a big deal about this, if you assume Shephard's Christian, well... I don't see any crosses in the game. If everything type of media you consume has to be centered on Christianity, then I don't think any major gaming company is catering to your audience, and you best go somewhere else.

@ChaosUndivided: The game is really fun, has great atmosphere and environmental detail, good voice acting and audio, and simplifications to many of the RPG elements that still retain the richness of DII's system, even making them richer in the process. So much as I've played it, it seems the game deserves to do well on its own merits. As for the AH, the only thing that makes me raise an eyebrow is the "nominal posting fee" that Blizzard will asses for every item posted. Granted, this has the advantage of preventing flooding of posts to the AH. But anyway, as I see it, the AH is far less sinister than is described in this article, for the following reasons: 1) This article is saying that the AH gives the game a F2P-like micro-transaction shop, but in a non-F2P game. That's really completely FALSE. Most people didn't buy items for cash in DII, even though you could through 3rd party sites, and still could play the game just fine. It is the same here: no one will ever NEED to buy items off the AH to play the game fully. 2) Like I said above: in DII, people ALREADY buy and sell items and gold for real-world currency through 3rd party sites. And often people using these sites are cheated. Such people complain to Blizzard, but there's nothing they can do. This at least will prevent cheating.